During the summer and fall of 1962, in response to Freedom Riders taking buses to the South to end segregation, Southern politicians tricked about 200 African-Americans, many of them women with young children, into taking buses to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and other locations. These families were called “reverse freedom riders,” and many of them were dropped in Hyannis, near President John F. Kennedy’s estate.
They were promised they were going to work for the Kennedys. But it wasn’t true.
On September 14, 2022, in response to the ongoing influx of migrants and refugees at the border, Southern politicians flew fifty Venezuelans, including several families with young children, to Martha’s Vineyard—an island off the coast of Cape Cod where members of America’s elite, including the Obamas and Spike Lee, currently own summer homes.
The Venezuelans said they were told they were going to Boston.
“We talked to a number of people who asked, ‘Where am I?’,” Edgartown Police Chief Bruce McNamee told NPR. “I was trying to explain where Martha’s Vineyard is.”
In both cases, vulnerable people were used as pawns to make a political point. Like Hyannis in the 1960s, the Vineyard is a symbol of liberal wealth and power. And like the families bused to the Cape back then, the migrants flown to the Vineyard were tricked and lied to. They were told there would be jobs and housing waiting for them.
But these new “reverse freedom rides” to Martha’s Vineyard were more than just a nod to past tactics and a wasteful and hurtful political stunt. They’re part of an orchestrated, months-long Republican campaign, using thousands of traumatized refugees, to inflame public opinion against Democrats over the issue of immigration ahead of the mid-term elections in November.
Since April, the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have spent more than $15 million in state funds to bus more than 11,000 migrants and refugees to New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Last week, about a hundred people were dropped off in front of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Republicans say they are doing this to call attention to the Democrat’s supposed failure to secure the border and hypocrisy over the designation of sanctuary cities. Yet there are signs the campaign may backfire—as the original Reverse Freedom Riders ploy ultimately did—by making Republicans look cruel and callous and forcing them to agree to a more humane and equitable way of treating people.
The campaign has posed a dilemma for Democrats, who, like Republicans, have had few good answers to the challenges posed by the border. Authorities in the receiving cities have scrambled to respond, issuing emergency declarations and calling for help from the National Guard. Some have threatened legal action against the Republican governors.
Lawyers for the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard have already filed a lawsuit against the governor of Florida for false imprisonment and other charges, and the sheriff of the San Antonio-area county where they were lured said he is investigating to see if a crime took place.
The agencies and volunteers tasked with helping migrants in the northern cities say Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has been notifying them about when and where buses will be arriving, but Texas Governor Greg Abbott has not. Most of the migrants arrive destitute and desperately in need of services. Of the 11,000 that went to New York City, about 8,500 are now in shelters.
While Republicans call these migrants “illegal aliens,” all have some form of legal status. They are mostly Venezuelan asylum-seekers who made it to the border after harrowing journeys through the Darién Gap and Mexico. They have been given court dates and released into the country because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Venezuela and can’t deport them. Some others are from Cuba or Nicaragua, or other countries with strained U.S. relations that make deportations difficult.
Very few of the bused migrants are Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, or Hondurans, the four nationalities who made up the vast majority of the 1.8 million apprehensions at the border last year. Under pandemic-era rules and agreements still in place, almost all migrants from those countries are subject to immediate expulsion to Mexico or their home countries, regardless of circumstances.
Migrant advocates have long called for more resources for, and attention to, the humanitarian crisis at the border. They say it’s possible the uproar over the busing campaign could lead to positive changes. One proposed solution is for immigration authorities to provide transportation to cities where migrants have families or sponsors ready to receive them, as well as more support for public and private agencies in those cities to help migrants find jobs and get settled. The White House is reportedly considering such a plan.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has called for Republican governors and federal authorities to coordinate with him and with other mayors over the migrant arrivals. President Biden is also reportedly planning to send resources to El Paso to help handle the influx there, which is so acute that the city has started coordinating bus rides to other cities for migrants.
Although the two small jets that carried the fifty migrants to Martha’s Vineyard originated in Texas, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis paid the $615,000 cost, using money from a $12 million public fund designated to transport migrants out of state. Like officials in other places that received migrants from Texas, authorities on the Vineyard were caught off guard.
“They had twenty minutes’ notice,” Mike Colaneri, seventy-nine, a lifelong Vineyard resident who has helped resettle refugees on the island, tells The Progressive.
Despite the short notice, local politicians, social service agencies, and volunteers quickly organized to open a church and provide shelter, food, and clothing. Donations poured in. On Friday, September 16, the Republican governor of Massachusetts arranged for the migrants to be moved to the former Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, where they could stay while they received medical care, legal aid, and help making arrangements to get to where they needed to go.
Ironically, the original Reverse Freedom Riders were also sent to Otis Air Force Base. Some of them eventually settled in the Boston area, where they struggled to find jobs and housing amid racial discrimination.
Massachusetts in the 1960s may not have been the most welcoming place, but this time state and local leaders responded well, Colaneri says.
In addition to being known as the summer retreat of wealthy African-Americans, the Vineyard has an Indigenous population, the Wampanoag, and a history of accepting immigrants and refugees. These include fishing families from Portugal and the Cape Verde Islands, and Laotians after the Vietnam War.
“We have Brazilians, Jamaicans, Bulgarians, Romanians, Croatians, Hungarians, you name it,” says Colaneri, a first-generation Italian whose father had a barbershop in the town of Tisbury.
Immigrants on the Vineyard face the same issues as everyone else, including the high cost of living and lack of affordable housing. Some workers commute from off-island every day.
But Colaneri said life has been less difficult for migrants in Massachusetts since the state started issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented residents, and the pandemic actually boosted the island’s economy. Many property owners started working remotely and found they could live there full time, so more jobs are now available even in winter.
“We would have had no problem absorbing fifty people,” he said.
The migrants were given the option of staying, but they all wanted to leave, according to Colaneri. Some were headed to Florida, which has a rapidly growing Venezuelan population.